Department of Physics & Astronomy

1999 Department News

September 17, 1999

Three additional candidate irregular satellites of Uranus have been discovered during July 1999 using the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Adding to the first 2 irregular satellites of the planet (found by members of the same team in 1997), this brings the uranian inventory to 16 regular and 5 irregular satellites, the most for any planet in the solar system. The discovery team consisted of an international collaboration of astronomers from the Observatory of Nice, France (B.Gladman, J-M. Petit, H. Scholl), McMaster University, Canada (J. Kavelaars), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA (M. Holman), and Cornell University (P. Nicholson, J.A. Burns). Follow up observations were obtained at the Mount Palomar 5-meter and Kitt Peak 4-meter telescopes (the latter in conjunction with D. Davis and C. Neese of the Planetary Science Institute (Tucson, USA). B. Marsden and G. Williams of the IAU Minor Planet Center computed preliminary orbits for the reported objects.

July 29, 1999

The discovery of two new candidate moons of Uranus was announced by JJ Kavelaars of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster University and Brett Gladman of the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur (OCA).

May 4, 1999

A Wilkin's Memorial Travel Scholarship (worth 00) has been awarded this year to one of the department's undergraduate co-op students, Phil Eles. Only two scholarships were awarded this year. Phil is in level IV of the V year Medical & Health co-op degree program. He is going to use the money to pay his travel expenses to Australia, where he has a co-op workterm placement. He will work at Queensland University of Technology from the beginning of May to the end of December on a bioimpedance project.